Actors Strike closes major Hollywood studios

Thousands of actors, from A-list celebrities to those struggling to break into the entertainment industry, voted to strike this week, plunging Hollywood and the wider film and television industry into what appears to be a long work stoppage.

The Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) ordered the strike on Thursday, demanding a new contract that takes into account new technologies including video streaming and artificial intelligence that have already transformed the industry and appear likely to drive even more change in the future. Previously, 98% of union members had voted in favor of authorizing the strike if negotiators failed to reach an agreement.

SAG-AFTRA members join members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who have been on strike since May, with similar demands for an updated contract. The last time writers and actors went on strike at the same time was in 1960, when actor and future US President Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild.

On the other side of the dispute is the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), representing major movie studios, streaming services and other outlets including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount , Sony and Warner Bros. Discovery. . Negotiations between the alliance and SAG-AFTRA broke down this week.

Battle lines drawn

While there are a number of issues for both sides to address, two of the biggest are residual payments and the use of generative AI.

The term residue refers to the payments actors receive when a production in which they participated is rerun. The current system doesn’t take good account of the phenomenon of on-demand streaming of movies and TV shows, and doesn’t include enhancements for movies and shows that become very popular. Actors want a success metric that increases payout for popular content.

Additionally, actors want compensation and protections surrounding the use of generative artificial intelligence. For example, if footage of their performance is used to train AI systems, which can then artificially produce new content using an actor’s image and voice, they want to be paid for that content.

Structural issues

James McMahon, professor at the University of Toronto and author of The political economy of Hollywood: capitalist power and cultural production, told VOA in an email exchange that the sticking points between actors and studios are structural and will be difficult to overcome.

Declining box office receipts and the rise of video streaming are, I believe, two sides of the same coin, he wrote. Major studios have (a) struggled to get more people to watch more movies, especially in theaters; and (b) have struggled to produce filmed entertainment profits that are competitive with the profits of other large multinational companies. Video streaming is apparently coming to the rescue of declining box office receipts. However, the growth of streaming users is not infinite, and when growth slows, companies will reap additional benefits from streaming by raising prices and lowering costs.

He said studios have been able to extract more revenue by raising the price of streaming services, keeping residuals low and hiring fewer writers.

[T]This is how, until these strikes, the major studios found additional opportunities to cut costs. These strikes seem existential because the WGA and SAG-AFTRA say these cost-cutting perks haven’t been negotiated enough, especially for the welfare of the average actor or writer.

Greed Claims

Fran Drescher, best known as the star of 1990s TV show “The Nanny,” gave a fiery speech Thursday in her capacity as current president of SAG-AFTRA, calling the studios greedy and selfish. She criticized studios for resisting calls to raise actor salaries at the same time that studio executives, like Disney CEO Bob Iger, are paid tens of millions of dollars a year.

We are the victims here. We are victims of a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people we have dealt with treat us, she said.

I can’t believe, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things, Drescher added. How they plead poverty, that they lose money left and right giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It’s disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history.

In a press release in response to the strike, the AMPTP said, “A strike is certainly not the outcome we hoped for because the studios cannot function without the artists who bring our television shows to life and our movies. The Union has unfortunately chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry.”

Huge impact

The combined effect of the two strikes will be to halt production of most feature films and scripted television programs. The writers’ strike had already forced many productions to shut down, but now even movies and shows whose scripts have been completed will be affected.

However, the impact of the strikes will go beyond stopping production. SAG-AFTRA members will be prohibited from promoting the films they appear in, including campaigning for accolades such as Oscars for films and Emmys for television programs.

On Thursday, the stars of “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie,” two summer blockbusters slated for release this month, stopped attending promotional events promoting the films. In the case of “Oppenheimer,” the main cast, including Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Florence Pugh, walked out in the middle of the film’s London premiere after the strike was announced.

middle class actors

While Hollywood megastars may receive the bulk of media coverage, the vast majority of SAG-AFTRA’s roughly 160,000 members are not household names, but people trying to make a living in an industry that has dramatically changed in recent years.

It’s not about the big stars, they have their own agents who negotiate contracts beyond the SAG contract and make hundreds of thousands, millions, even tens of millions of dollars, said Jonathan Handel, attorney for the media and journalist, at VOA. It’s about middle-class actors struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table in expensive cities like Los Angeles and New York.

Handel, whose book, Hollywood on strike! : An industry at war in the age of the Internet, chronicled the actors’ last strike in 2007, said the parties could face a long road to a permanent resolution.

Right now, there’s a lot of bitterness in the room, he said. A lot has been said, and there’s really no appetite for anything other than banging. The unions are very upset and very unhappy with the way the companies are handling things. Companies, for their part, see this as existential as well, because filmed entertainment hasn’t seen a more rapid and disruptive change in such a short time since the post-WWII era.